Considering that I’ve been a Porsche fan since I was a pre-teen, and I’ve owned Porsches over the last 30+ years, you would think that I would know every Porsche related group and event in existance. I must be living under a rock, because until a few years ago, I had never heard of Luftgekühlt. Luftgekühlt is a German word, meaning Air Cooled, a reference to the original Porsche 911 engines up to 1998 that were air/oil cooled and didn’t have radiators or water cooling.

The Luftgekühlt brand is the creation of two-time Le Mans winner Patrick Long and creative director Howie Idelson. They held their first event in 2014 and have managed to hold on to the original mission of creating highly curated events where the incredible cars are only matched by the creative staging. They are a photographers dream, and Luft has now become my entire personality and half my wardrobe 🙂

Luft 9 was held on Mare Island, the oldest Naval base on the west coast and about 25 miles from San Francisco. Day 1 was dedicated to air-cooled Porsches of all models, shapes and sizes, and day 2 featured both air and water cooled cars. The twisted, rusty backdrop of an old military base was the perfect contrast to these beautiful machines.

I absconded with both Gabe and Shep for a weekend of cars. We flew to San Francisco, stayed at a nearby hotel, and enjoyed the Luft event, the hotel pool and some late night snack runs!

What is an automotive nerd to do when their family takes a vacation in LA? The Hollywood Sign…Disneyland…Walk of Fame…I think not! When it came time for me to pick the day’s activity, I took us straight to the Peterson Museum! A good friend of mine, Dan, works with the museum from time to time, and has always spoken so highly of the collection. It didn’t disappoint. On the day we went the museum had a ton of special exhibits. The Tesla room was a huge hit and we met our future overlords, the Tesla robot. James Hetfield had a collection of hot rods, there was a 24K gold Delorean, the first Ferrari, a ton of famous movie cars, a Porsche art exhibit by Daniel Arsha, an F1 exhibit, not to mention all of the incredibly rare cars in throughout the museum. It is worth a special trip to LA just for the experience.

Shep and I joined some PNWR friends in a lovely mix of Porsches to explore some beautiful roads in the Pacific Northwest. I would describe more, but this happened so long ago that I’ve forgotten the details 🙂

If you’ve spent any time on this blog, you know how much I love really long drives. Organized tours, spontaneous road trips, late night cruising through the city…the longer the better. Nothing is better to me than when Meg, the boys, or a good friend want to come along for the ride.

The PNWR plans great day tours, but nothing compares to their multi-day adventures. When I saw they had planned a three day tour to Sun Mountain Lodge, I signed up and booked the resort. Then I told Meg about it, and she was down to be my plus-one…game on.

On Friday, we started the tour with a beautiful drive over the North Cascades Highway with stops at Diablo Lake and Washington Pass Overlook to stretch our legs and admire the scenery. On Friday evening we explored the town of Winthrop, and had a great dinner at the Sun Mountain Lidge restaurant.

On Saturday, Meg decided to stick around the lodge, we had our own cabin by the lake, while I joined some folks from the Inland Northwest Region on an epic day or twisty roads. It was honestly one of the best days of driving that I can remember. For the most part we had the roads to ourselves. Saturday night was a fun group dinner and then we took the long way home on Sunday to enjoy as many great driving roads as we could find.

Today was the All Porsche Grand Display Concurs event held annually in Kirkland, Washington. I wasn’t able to make it this year, but it reminded me that I never posted photos from the past two years. My first time attending, I entered my 718 Spyder and I won my category! The next year, I couldn’t show my car due to some other commitments, but I was able to swing by with the boys to see all of the amazing Porsche cars on display…shined up and looking their best. The PNWR club puts on one hell of a show:

It’s been forever since I updated the blog! One of my favorite weekend activities is to escape the corporate world, maybe grab one of the boys and spend time with friends at a Cars and Coffee. I’m lucky to live in an area with a ton of options in the summer, and some that run all year. Here is a collection of my favorite photos from “recent” cars and coffee events:

Sundays @ Lake Washington Cars and Coffee & Caffe Umbria

I’m lucky to have some good friends that share my love (okay, total obsession) with Porsche. Two friends in particular, Gary Barklind and Martin Wild also share a willingness to adorn their beautiful cars with historical racing liveries…nothing subtle about our cars anymore! We have been talking about getting together for a livery themed drive for some time, but this past summer, we actually made it happen. For more details on my livery, you can see this post from early in 2022.

Gary has a 981 Cayman with the Martini Racing “hippie” livery which looks perfectly psychedelic. Martin has a 987 Cayman with the red and blue striped Brumos Racing livery that is a perfect match for the lines of his car. I have a modern interpretation of the classic Martini Racing team livery on my 718 Spyder. Three different generations of mid-engine Porsches and three timeless racing liveries out to have some fun.

Shep, my 12 year old son, joined us on the trip and also took one of my favorite photos from the day:

We met up early in the morning at the intersection of SR 9 and 20 in Sedro Wooley to gas up, grab some snacks and start the drive:

Our route took us north on SR 9 and some spirited driving on Mosquito Lake Road, a true gem of a twisty back road. We stopped at the one-lane bridge crossing the middle fork of the Nooksack river to stretch our legs and take some photos. We got lucky and another car didn’t come along for about 20 minutes.

Our next stop was in Welcome, and we took another short break and of course…more photos. We had a video crew along with us as well and this stop allowed them to catch up. The poor guys were in an old Toyota Land Cruiser and the didn’t stand a chance in the twisties!

We had a blast making our way up Mt. Baker Highway and we had virtually no traffic. The cars we did see were so enamored with our cars that they pulled over and let us pass (which never happens)! We took our time exploring Mt. Baker and driving up to Artist Point. Lots of fun photos at the top!

Some shots at Heather Meadows:

More photos at the visitor center with Table Mountain in the background and then on to Artist Point:

We made our way back down the mountain for a lunch stop at Chair 9 Woodstone Pizza and Bar:

A few shots courtesy of our our film crew:

Gary and Martin partnered on writing a Spiel article about the trip and it was fun to get to re-live the whole experience a few months later when the magazine arrived! You can read the fantastic Spiel article here – https://www.nwpublishingcenter.com/Spiel_Nov22_Digital.pdf

Here is the video that the film crew captured of the day. It was an amazing day of driving! Huge thanks to Gary and Martin for planning the route and being such great companions. Thanks to Andrew and his crew for keeping up as best they could and capture some great footage:

Avants is an incredible, inclusive and diverse car club that started in Seattle and has now expanded to several other cities around the country. Wonderful people, a first class quarterly publication, and great events. Each year, they hold a big one, AvantsFest, at Pacific Raceways in the Seattle area. Tons of cars, friends, vendors, racing, and this year…a lot of sun. It was hot! I managed to convince both my sons, Gabe and Shep, to come with me, but they quickly retreated into the shade with some sweet treats to beat the heat.

Krissy is the local Seattle club leader and our host for the day. The whole Avants team worked their butts off to prepare for and pull off such a big event!

A tiny portion of the cars but I thought my camera was going to melt, so I put it away 🙂

I found some shade and captured some fun racing action: